Sen. Marco Rubio is furiously trying to regain control over a personal narrative and political image that have taken some hits lately.

With his name still simmering in the GOP veepstakes, the Florida Republican and his staff are spending an extraordinary amount of time, money and effort to define himself on the national stage before his political enemies — and a probing press corps — do it first.

Rubio has even hired investigators to look into his own background, since he knows Democrats are doing the same. His political action committee paid a firm more than $40,000 to conduct opposition research on Rubio, and it’s preparing to spend thousands more to dig into family stories, financial documents and real estate records — anything that could pop up in a political “oppo” file.

The effort to hard wire Rubio’s version of his life story into the public psyche is remarkable for a freshman senator, more on the scale of a presidential candidate. Some in his operation say the staffing and money spent are comparable to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s efforts when they arrived in the Senate with big names and even bigger ambition.

Several Rubio aides and advisers declined to speak on the record for this story, but given the unusual level of scrutiny facing their boss, they say he’s been left with little choice.

“We spent a day and a half explaining what church he went to when he was 8,” lamented one top adviser. “We are getting a proctological exam on a daily basis.”

But if the political attacks and critical stories are causing any discomfort, Rubio’s not showing it.

“I spend all day thinking about the votes I take and the job I do for Florida. That other stuff is just part of the job that’s on the side in terms of telling the story of who I am,” he told POLITICO in an interview just off the Senate floor. “I had a pretty long campaign. The people in Florida know exactly who I am.”

Behind almost every strategic decision is his inner circle of political advisers — all of whom never really stopped campaigning for Rubio after orchestrating his shocking upset of Florida’s sitting GOP governor, Charlie Crist, in the 2010 Senate race.

They aren’t your run-of-the-mill Senate staffers. They’re old political hands who have worked with some of the biggest names in GOP politics, and they’re getting paid out of Rubio’s Reclaim America PAC. They include Heath Thompson, a political consultant who led George W. Bush’s successful 2000 presidential campaign in South Carolina and later oversaw his 2004 reelection efforts in the Southeast; and Todd Harris, who has served as a top communications adviser for Jeb Bush, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Rubio’s PAC also employs Malorie Miller, who worked for Jeb Bush when he was Florida governor and led the Rubio campaign’s online messaging, fundraising and grass-roots outreach, as well as Alberto Martinez, a Tallahassee-based operative and former Jeb Bush aide who recently signed on to advise Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in Florida. South Carolina strategist Terry Sullivan has taken a partial leave as Rubio’s deputy chief of staff in order to manage the day-to-day operations for the PAC.

Thompson, Harris and Miller are partners at Something Else Strategies, which is paid a monthly retainer of $10,000 by Rubio’s PAC, according to year-end campaign finance records. The PAC has paid Martinez $5,000 a month and Sullivan $3,000 a month. In the last quarter of 2011, the newly formed PAC raised $563,000 and paid these strategists a total of nearly $60,000.

Politicians typically use leadership PACs as a fundraising tool to financially support like-minded candidates. And Rubio made his first endorsement Monday, traveling to Ohio to back state Treasurer Josh Mandel for Senate. But they’re also used to advance other political goals.

Rubio’s team resembles those of Obama and Clinton when they first entered the Senate in 2005 and 2001, respectively. Obama had Democratic strategists David Axelrod and David Plouffe at his Hopefund PAC and Robert Gibbs in his Senate office, while Clinton staffed her HillPAC with such political powerhouses as Howard Wolfson and Patti Solis Doyle.

“Obama had these people. Clinton had these people,” the Rubio adviser said. “You need a top-notch team to be prepared for any opportunity and every hurdle. Everything has been thrown at him thus far, and every shot on goal has been stopped.”

However, a big test will come this summer. Rubio has been spending nights and weekends drafting his memoirs, “An American Son,” which a division of Penguin is set to publish this fall. But it will have some stiff competition: Washington Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia — who angered Rubio when he published a front-page story last fall accusing him of embellishing the facts of his parents’ emigration from Cuba — will release his own Rubio biography July 3.

That book is expected to provide a tougher view of the rising GOP star at the height of the veepstakes, and make it more challenging for Rubio’s handlers to control his unfolding narrative.

Rubio’s aides have effectively frozen out Roig-Franzia, turning down all interview requests since his unflattering October story. Roig-Franzia, through his publicist, declined to comment on the matter.

“If people want to read about Rubio’s life story, they should buy his autobiography,” a second Rubio aide said.

Rubio’s media and political operation got another workout just last month. According to aides, the senator received a phone call from his cousin, Mo Denis, a Democratic state senator in Nevada, who said he had just told a reporter that Rubio had attended the Mormon Church as a child when his family was living in Las Vegas.

His experience – and baptism – in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was something Rubio, a Roman Catholic who also attends an evangelical Protestant church in Miami, had never publicly spoken of before. Aides insist he intended to include that piece of history in his forthcoming biography.

But the phone call set the wheels in motion: The next morning, Rubio’s publisher, after conferring with senior advisers, leaked to the Miami Herald three tidbits from the senator’s memoirs, including word of his Mormon background. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant later confirmed the story to an inquiring reporter from BuzzFeed, who had interviewed Denis a day earlier.

The leak had allowed Rubio’s team to frame his past experience in the church as just one fascinating nugget that would be revealed in his memoirs, even as the more in-depth BuzzFeed story raised questions about whether GOP voters would now tolerate Rubio on the presidential ticket with devout Mormon Mitt Romney.

Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot praised the Rubio team’s handling of the Mormon issue, writing that the senator should disclose any “personal and political skeletons” before he’s picked for the No. 2 job.

Added one GOP senator: “If he’s chosen as VP, his image will be set in about the first 24 hours. Think of Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle.”

Rubio’s strategists are heeding that warning. This month, Rubio called on a Florida ethics panel to toss out an outstanding 2010 complaint against him, fearing it could hand Democrats political ammunition. And Rubio’s PAC has paid Sacramento-based MB Public Affairs more than $40,000 to conduct opposition research on the senator.

“Because of the unique circumstance he’s in, he’s had to take an abundance of caution,” said GOP strategist and former Hill staffer Ron Bonjean, who doesn’t work for Rubio. “To me it would be political malpractice not to do something like that to protect you from surprises.

“So far, nothing out there is politically unsustainable for him. People think he’s still a rock star.”